CT Blue

I just finished reading the Georgia indictment. A bit of a slog, since you have to go through so much boilerplate legal language, but still a fun read. I didn’t practice criminal law, and RICO wasn’t a thing when I took criminal law in law school, but it looks like a pretty strong case to me. As I understand it, the theory of the case is that the parties entered into a conspiracy to steal the election, which made many of what might otherwise be seen as legal acts illegal, as they were taken in furtherance of the conspiracy.

I haven’t read a lot of reaction to the indictment, but what I have read hasn’t, so far, emphasized the fact that there are 30 unindicted co-conspirators. One must assume that a number of them must be co-operating witnesses. Just based on the overall story told in the indictment, I’d guess that many of them are the fake Georgia electors, some of whom must have felt, in retrospect, that they were being used (which they were).

Not to be a nit-picker, but the indictment may be vulnerable in light of the legal theories popping up on the right, for after all, it’s always possible that the Supreme Court (really hurts to call it “supreme”) will adopt this spanking new legal theory that making false statements in order to achieve the ends of a criminal conspiracy cannot be a crime (when committed by a Republican), because “free speech!”. I’m sure we’ll be hearing soon that when Rudy lied to state legislators about alleged fraud in Georgia when he tried to get them to overturn the election results, or when other defendants signed official documents asserting that the fake electors were in fact the real electors, that they were merely exercising their right to free speech and any statute that makes it a crime to induce official action by making false statements is simply not constitutional when applied to Republicans. I’m sure Clarence Thomas will see the merits in that position.

If you want a copy of the indictment, you can download it here.

UPDATE: Well, the free speech defense has been raised on Fox, by none other than Jonathan Turley, the guy who used to be a fairly rational legal analyst years ago when my wife and I used to watch him on the Keith Olbermann show. I guess some people will say anything to get on TV. There’s a good explanation at the link explaining why the speech defense is without merit.